All Access With The Pacers: Learning R&R from Roy

Roy Hibbert plays a very traditional game. Formed in the likeness of past Georgetown bigs, Hibbert has an old school mindset in just about everything he does on the court.

But off the court, dude's different. I doubt that back in the 90s, Patrick Ewing ever used full-length boots and Sega Genesis games to help him survive the NBA season but today, Hibbert has implemented a variation of this into his routine.

I have pretty accurate nerd-dar, frankly because, I am one. And it picks up strong nerd alert signals whenever I walk over to the corner of the Indiana Pacers locker room where Hibbert resides. While some guys wear only the clothing from their sponsorships or the hook-up schwag they get in exchange to shouting out designers on Instagram, Hibbert mostly rocks button-down plaid shirts. He'll even sport a Buzzfeed hat during an interview for no other reason than he digs the website and would likely work as an unpaid intern there if they'd let him.

So, it's only natural that Hibbert would have a pretty nerdy way in recovering in the grind of an NBA season.

After the Pacers' big win on Monday night over the Denver Nuggets, and Hibbert had 14 points, 12 rebounds and 4 blocks in spite of sitting the entire fourth quarter. It was quite the performance simply because the Pacers were playing on the second night of a back-to-back and all season long, HIbbert had looked like he was fighting in quick sand in such games. Before Monday, the Pacers had played 13 games on the second night of a back-to-back and only twice had Hibbert exceeded his scoring total from the night before. One of the worst examples was the Jan. 25 game in Denver (right after a win in Sacramento) when Hibbert could only stay on the floor for a season-low 19 minutes, 47 seconds and only attempted 3 shots resulting in 5 points. Before fouling out, the 7-2 Hibbert had just 6 rebounds.

To be fair, there were many factors working against Hibbert, who has exercise-induced asthma and had to recover and play in the thin air of Denver. Still, it was a poor performance and by the time the Pacers landed home early Monday morning for the rematch against the Nuggets, Hibbert decided to change up his back-to-back habits.

"I did things a little bit differently, myself, with my routine," Hibbert said. "I think it worked out so I'll stick with it."

When Hibbert teases that he's doing something "differently," you're automatically hooked and on board for the story. So, I take the bait and ask.

"You don't want to know," Hibbert said, laughing.

Okay. Now, I'm all in. So I ask - no, darn there plead - for more details.

Hibbert then explained how he changed his sleep pattern: instead of waking up early to eat breakfast, then going back to sleep late into the day and eat again, Hibbert rose up at 10 a.m. for the first meal and stayed awake. Alright, pretty normal stuff. But, Hibbert wasn't done.

"You're going to laugh," Hibbert said, then explained how he uses the compression boots from NormaTec.

While awake, Hibbert strapped on the very expensive boots that reach all the up to his thighs as they are engineered to massage the body and speed up recovery. For 45 minutes in the early Monday afternoon, Hibbert stayed booted up and watched television. But this wasn't the end of his recovery method.

"Actually there are studies that show playing video games helps you," Hibbert said, "so I come in and have to get at least 10-15 minutes of playing Call of Duty on PlayStation before the game."

Hibbert is a known gamer but who knew that shoot-em up games helped him stay alert and ready for his job? And he prefers Call of Duty over NBA video games...